


Self-Pity

by WallofIllusion



Category: Soul Eater
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-04
Updated: 2011-07-04
Packaged: 2017-10-21 00:23:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 485
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/218774
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WallofIllusion/pseuds/WallofIllusion
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The voices in his head take attractive shapes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Self-Pity

**Author's Note:**

> Early Soul Eater work. Contains a headcanon nugget!

He felt the bed shift as someone sat down behind him. He resisted the urge to pull the covers over his head and block her out—that was shameful, and she wasn't there anyway. He knew this. But it didn't make her go away.

Impossibly gentle fingers combed through his hair. "You're so tense," observed Medusa's voice. "Why?"

 _As if you have no idea._

"This is a hard time of day for you, isn't it?"

The time between full wakefulness and full sleep, the one time his mind was inevitably free to wander. He preferred sleep, empty sleep since at age seventeen he'd cut out a piece of his brain stem to stop his mad and violent dreams.

"Why fear what your own mind can produce?" She lowered her voice and leaned closer. "Why should you be hated for what comes naturally to you? Doesn't that seem unfair to you, Stein?"

Stein shut his eyes.

Medusa's fingers caught on a stubborn knot and worked to tease it out. "Death doesn't trust you," she murmured. "He knows you're trying your hardest to fight the madness, but he demands more of you. And he still thinks you'll fail."

 _Funny thing for a hallucination to say._

She gave a quiet laugh as if she could read his mind. Of course she could. She was a hallucination; she _was_ his mind.

"Is that what you think I am?"

 _It is what you are._ He didn't say it out loud.

"Sorry to disappoint," she said, sounding amused, "but you're wrong. I can prove it, too: I know something you don't." She brushed hair away from his ear and leaned so close that her breath tickled. "Death is right. You _will_ fail."

Stein felt like someone had dumped ice water into his stomach.

"It's only logical," she continued. "What are the conditions for success—staving off the madness? For what, a few hours? You're not capable of throwing it off completely. Even before I revived the Kishin, you never had the ability to be normal—only to act like it, which leaves you tired and dissatisfied. You can't succeed. You can only not fail, until you're so exhausted from fighting your own honest desire that you _do_ fail. And if it's only a matter of time, why fight? You _want_ to go insane. Your thoughts of God—moral or immoral—you want to lose them. You want to be moved by your own desire alone. Why are you letting the morals that you were force-fed control you, Stein?"

"Stop," Stein whispered. No, he pleaded. At some point, he had started shaking. His fists were clenched with the effort of not listening to Medusa, and she laughed again.

"Take as long as you like. I'm patient. It's only yourself you're hurting by struggling like this."

There was a soft, brief pressure of her lips against his jaw, and then he was alone.


End file.
